Blog feedAn Island Adventure with Glow
April 7th, 2009
Last week I embarked on a week long visit to the most southern of the populated Western Isles. My whirlwind tour which covered Lewis, Harris, Benbecula and Barra was the next phase in a series of Glow training events for teachers and school staff in one of the most remote local authorities in Scotland.
My first stop was E. Scott School in Tarbert, where the original Western Isles mentors had been trained the year before. Here, I spent the day with teachers from across Lewis and Harris exploring ideas for learning and teaching and demonstrating how much easier Glow would make communication across the islands. This turned out to be slightly ironic when internet access across the whole island went down in the middle of the afternoon! (This was due to a mainland problem on the interconnect link).
Obviously used to such minor setbacks the group and myself simply set up wirelessly in a local Hotel using laptops until normal service was resumed. For myself and some of the teachers there, there was a real sense of deja vu as exactly the same thing had happened the year before!
On Tuesday I flew to Benbecula to catch a connecting flight to Barra – only to be told at Benbecula that the Barra flight had not left Glasgow! After the local Glow contact Hamish Budge scrabbled to hire a car there followed a mad dash to catch the local ferry to Barra. Finally arriving in beautiful Castlebay at 4 I was introduced to the teachers at Castlebay School who had all stayed on to attend a twilight session on Glow and left showing real enthusiasm about the difference that it could make in their classroom and school community. 
On Wednesday I spent the day with Barra school management and administration staff discussing how Glow would make the dissemination of school information much easier and again Glow was received very enthusiastically. The group came up with many excellent ideas for the types of information that could be circulated including absence lists and school news. I then left Castlebay glowing… and headed back on the ferry to Benbecula.
On Thursday I spent the day at Sgoil Lionacleit with Uist based school management and administration staff. After hearing about some of the ideas from their Barra counterparts they also quickly realised the huge difference that having access to Glow would make to their schools.
On Thursday evening and Friday morning Hamish and I did a double-act to deliver sessions to a special Glow working group of teachers from Sgoil Lionacleit who are preparing to roll Glow out to the rest of their staff after Easter. They were incredibly excited about the learning and teaching opportunities that Glow could offer, and both Hamish and myself helped them plan a strategy to give the rest of the staff their best first experience of the portal.
Kenny Matheson and the entire Western Isles central team have worked incredibly hard to get Glow going in their authority and thanks to them after the Easter holidays every school in the Western Isles will have Glow available to them. It was this wonderful thought that made the ferry to Skye and then the long drive back to Glasgow worthwhile. My thanks in particular go out to Coleen, Jane and Hamish for their expertise, company, humour and enthusiasm during the course of an unforgettable week.
Annag Maclean